I posted this in the comments yesterday, but not everyone reads the threads all the way through, so I figured I’d elevate it to the front page. Which I can do, this being my site and all.
First, this: The Romney campaign — perhaps sensing a potential Santorum surge — has begun in earnest to dump its oppo research into people’s inboxes. To wit: “Romney is going after Santorum now. Inbox: RICK SANTORUM: PROUD DEFENDER OF EARMARKS AND PORK-BARREL SPENDING”.
To which I’d like to ask that someone, anyone — and there are plenty of you erstwhile very staunch small-government conservatives (many former Perry supporters, in fact) who are now on the Romney inevitability train, for whatever your reasons — please please please tell the Romney campaign to stop trying to attack the remaining conservative candidates from the right. It insults the intelligence of anyone left who has any — first, because it’s very transparent aim is to depress the base by suggesting that there are no conservatives alternatives remaining to serve as antidotes to the coronation of Captain Gladhand Milquetoast; second, because it relies on the strategy that those in the base it can’t win over it can at least demoralize and keep at home, allowing Mitt to win primaries where voter turnout is low; and third, because it implicitly suggests that Romney suddenly cares about conservatism — making his support for, eg., Obama’s stimulus, TARP, federal minimum wage increases, cap and trade, the individual mandate, government-run health care, gun control, and the bureaucratic suppression of religious conscience laws, all seem strangely anomalous.
So we’re not buying it. Nor are the “independents” we’re supposed to believe only Romney can garner for us.
And as to the substance of the Romney attacks on Santorum (and I expect Ron Paul to join in with this, given the libertarian small-government ideologues strange relationship with the big government corporatist Romney), let me just note that there are strong conservative arguments to be made for earmarks. For instance, here’s James Inhofe, whose conservatism is largely beyond reproach:
Banning earmarks will result in less accountability and transparency. The flawed Obama stimulus bill famously did not contain a single congressional earmarks, yet, as we found out long after the fact, those tax dollars were spent on hundreds of frivolous items such as a clown show in Pennsylvania, studying the mating decisions of the female cactus bug, and a helicopter able to detect radioactive rabbit droppings, to name a few. What all of these have in common is that they were spent by presidential earmarks, not congressional earmarks. Similarly, as faceless bureaucrats in the executive branch have continually taken greater responsibility over federal expenditures, lobbyists are increasingly turning to them, not Congress, for money. Unlike congressional earmarks, which are posted online prior to the expenditure and approved by representatives who must face the voters, executive spending is in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats, and we often do not find out about these expenditures until years after the fact.
Demagoguing earmarks provides cover for some of the biggest spenders in Congress. Congressional earmarks, for all their infamous notoriety, are not the cause of trillion-dollar federal deficits (of all the discretionary spending that took place in Washington last year, earmarks made up only 1.5 percent). Nor will an earmark moratorium solve the crisis of wasteful Washington spending run amuck. While anti-earmarkers bloviate about the billions spent through earmarks, many of them supported the trillions of dollars in extra spending for bailouts, stimulus, and foreign aid. Talk about specks versus planks! Over the course of the last several years, the overall number and dollar amount of earmarks has steadily decreased. During that same time, overall spending has ballooned by over $1.3 trillion. In reality, ballyhooing about earmarks has been used as a ruse by some to seem more fiscally responsible than they really are.
Santorum has come out for a significant change in the tax code; he has talked about the need to make tough decisions on cuts to programs and departments that he knows will be demagogued; he has promoted free-market alternatives to government programs meant to significantly downsize the size and scope of the federal government; he’s called for a balanced budget amendment coupled to an 18% cap in spending.
And yet we’re supposed to believe Santorum is a big-spending liberal Republican? The guy who rejected both the stimulus and TARP? Or worse still, we’re to conclude that Romney is therefore the better choice, because, well, why, exactly? The hair? The money? The organization necessary to defeat his opponents by outspending them on negative ads while allowing his fluffers in the GOP establishment to carry the water for him with strained defenses of his demonstrably anti-conservative record as a public servant?
This is madness. Unless you happen to be a status quo Republican, that is, in which case this is the hill you are willing to die on — knowing as you must that should a TEA Party wave sweep a conservative into office, reforms to the system you’ve grown so comfortable with will prove “draconian” to your hold on power, and there will have been an unambiguous mandate for the kind of institutional house cleaning that will of necessity follow.
Then there’s this from Ann Coulter, whose reputation as a unabashed conservative has given way to her new more well-deserved reputation as a rank opportunist and Rockefeller Republican groupie: says Coulter, should the TEA Party back Gingrich over Romney, they’ll prove themselves to be hypocrites, because they’ll have thrown their support behind an “influence peddler for Fannie and Freddie” (note the language, which comes right out of the Romney ads), and not behind the candidate Coulter tells us is “the most conservative” on immigration.
Listen: it may be true that Gingrich quasi-lobbied for Fannie and Freddy; but Romney supported the stimulus (Gingrich did not) — and unlike Gingrich, Romney did not lead the Reagan revival in the House, did not spearhead welfare reform, and did not balance the federal budget. Instead, he got busy with his friend and collaborator Teddy Kennedy designing the blue prints for state-run health care.
And of course, Santorum — whom Coulter will likely begin attacking next — called for reforms to Fannie and Freddy long before the housing bubble burst, rejected both the stimulus and TARP, and never supported an individual mandate, despite the Romney camp’s attempt to plant that seed by sending “conservative” new media outlets its bogus gotcha reports, which many of them initially ran with without bothering to verify.
So here’s my advice to the Santorum campaign, which I hope they read and consider: anytime an ad comes out against your candidate questioning his conservative credentials, the response from Santorum should be first to list the various big government, “moderate” and “progressive” things he doesn’t support that Romney does — from the stimulus to TARP to cap and trade to an individual mandate to federal minimum wage increases to gun control — and then second to follow up that list with something like, “Were Mitt Romney or his Super Pac truly concerned with the conservatism of the Republican candidates for President, he’d be spending millions of dollars and saturating media markets with a series of ads attacking himself.”
(thanks to Bob Reed, newrouter)
No, silly. It’s his turn.
If you’re not seriously thinking about a third party right about now, you’re no more serious about the problem than is the Republican party.
I’m not sure which party WMOD is in, but that’s the way I’m going.
So wait, Santorum is a pork-barrel-devotee. Despite the fact that he voted against the two biggest pork-barrel bill of our age-TARP and the porkulus…
Not only are the Romneyans mendacious, their ridiculously illogical as well…
Trouble is, I hope folks don’t fall for this.
Bob, one of the advantages of getting tossed out on your ass in ’06 is that you don’t have to vote anymore.
That’s Colonel Milquetoast, thank you velly much.
Don’t worry about it. Romney assured us all in his Florida victor’s speech that all of the conservative candidates he has relentlessly flogged will fall in line behind him.
We must be believers.
Well thanks Ernst; I meant that he “opposed” the two, but in a moment of gray cell deficit managed to type “voted against”.
I don’t remember Romney supporting the Obama stimulus I think what he said was that he’d have focused on cutting taxes and drilling more oils. Remember he was still running for president when the whole stimulus discussion was happening.
At the WaPo.
I’m shocked that days after I linked to Romney supporting the stimulus you’d wait and trot this out, just as we’re all shocked that you are now reluctantly, out of a strong sense of conservative duty and a rejection of Obama, of course, willing to support Mitt Romney.
Here. Let me refresh for you your memories whats seem unreliable:
I bolded for you the parts whats important to the misrememberings.
Remember he was still running for president when the whole stimulus discussion was happening.
Only in the sense that he’s been running for president since leaving the Governor’s mansion.
i have video too cause its important we find staunch staunch staunch candidates what didn’t take the same positions as obama.
Not if all we want to do is defeat the man we don’t.
Of course it could’nt hurt. Hard to make it about personalities when your guy doesn’t seem to have one.
I’m surprised that living out west like you do, feets, you don’t go after Romney for teh Mormonism. Me, I don’t care a whit about it, except that practical experience taught me that out there teh Mormons have plenty of strangleholds on plenty of governments, judiciaries, and what-not.
Such religiousity in a President Romney should set your sheets and sails in virulent opposition, I’d think. Especially as his numbers crater while Barry and the Mediatones get their narrative groove on and Mitt, having only ever taken orders, looks around for backup that’ll never come. Then you could chalk it up to your self-fulfilling prophesying, Palin-like it.
But then I also wonder how you could have mobied for the guy from like three years ago, so thick is the bias. Good perks?
he was for stimulus but not for Obama’s one, so I think it’s inaccurate to say he supported THE stimulus – and I could’ve lived with tax cuts and with *some* amount of for reals infrastructure spending but I guess I was wrong about drilling the oils – I find this talk of “energy technologies” to be very sketchy.
The mormonism thing is not something to go after Mr. Howard I think Romney’s been very clear that his religion is his religion and that’s that – aside from his gay marriage antipathy, which is a sine qua non of becoming the Team R nominee and would have to be his stance irrespective of what the mormon church says. Besides which, there’s oodles of mormons who are just fine with gay marriage.
But lots of candidates could take a lesson from how dignified Mr. Governor Romney has been with respect to not flaunting his religion or making overmuch of it with respect to the duties of the office he’s seeking.
Hey dummy, if Wolfie is saying Obama wants it passed before he’s inaugurated, I think it’s safe to assume that that implies it’s after Obama’s already been elected. And thus we are in fact talking about Obama’s stimulus.
Smacks of inevitability, doesn’t it. One must have such immutable principles.
Mike Gallagher told me Mitt’s a changed man.
yes Romney is in ebababa, probably
but if he’s not that’s ok with me I’ll just vote for whatever
this whole primary thing has been a damp squib I’ll be happy when it’s over and we can all work together for to defeat Obama
And around we go again.
Love those Obama dolls within dolls within dolls within dolls. Beat deficit by deficit. Beat Obama through more Obama. Make America with America (Clint says so!). Grow less government by growing more government. Health and happiness for all. See, it’s simple. Just say health and happiness for all, over and over and over, and voila! There you go.
Slate gets into the act though they are an equal opportunity attack dog of the left.
When Chrysler gets into financial trouble again down the road will the cry go out. “Fix It Again Timmy”?
And around we go again.
When he rolls over and shows you his belly like that
kick it
Obama very bad man
He said “butch”.
She said “Lifestyle choices.”
I say: Fuck it, Barack’s your huckleBarry.
sdferr, I’m kinda looking forward to those kiosks with Big Brother soothingly telling us that everything is a-okay and to be happy.
Hey, Moby: he was for the idea of a government stimulus, though he wanted one that didn’t just reward Obama’s constituency. A better one would be a stimulus he and the GOP got to control.
But still: Americans were hurting, and the government needed to step up and help them out by taking money out of the private sector and directing where it went. Because government knows best.
well yeah but most of his stimulus was based in tax cuts –
how much infrastructure spending did he want to do?
leigh, I’m holding out for the orgasmotron.
Classical liberalism is doomed because politics is asymmetrical. It’s asymmetrical because truth is a choice, something to be sought after and confirmed, and confirmed again and again.
It’s a choice then that bullshit gets more than a pass; when it gets exclusive top billing. Consider:
Exactly. Dependent failshit America decided that its neoGod had its best interest at heart — that neoGod was superior and omniscient and a class apart, but mostly because stuff was free for as long as neoGod’s bread and circuses lasted.
We’re no longer a self-made people; we’re a managed, governed, directed class of subservients. Second class. Inferior. To be dealt with. Why? Because we are, that’s why.
That this is conversational is testament to the power of The Lie to make it so.
Blake, heh.
Bullshit, Moby.
At the time Romney supported the idea of a stimulus, there was no official Act, just the outline from Obama. But he regretted that the GOP hadn’t already pushed through a $700 Billion dollar stimulus of their own.
vanuatu or bust dept.
link
Jeff, you have to give Romney credit. He’s been out in front on two huge issues and been wrong both times.
(for those who need a scorecard, that would be Romneycare and the stimulus)
Not only that, Romney has not backed down on either issue.
So, in a perverted sort of way, Romney is staunch and principled.
Unfortunately, Romney’s staunch principles are not conservative in the slightest.
If only Romney were a better magician, he could pull this stauchitude off. But he isn’t, so he won’t.
I still think Romney’s stimulus would’ve looked very different than Obama’s
but no one expects Romney to be super-conservative – he’s just the best Team R could do this year
speaking of spendings here is a video
If Romney is the best the GOP can do, then the GOP is no longer worthy of liberals’ support and deserves to lose.
Paul Ryan with a beard endorses Pete without a beard.
well maybe someone else will get the nomination Mr. Ernst
Romney doesn’t have to be in ebababa
but I’m anticipating voting for him
I like Pete I just thought the ad he did was … very brave
link
krauthammer review
link
Who is the best alternative to Romney?
Gingrich 20 %
Santorum 80 %
11,640 votes
Neil Boortz was angry today on the radio at people who say they won’t vote for Romney. Mr. Libertarian third party rebel dude is all not voting for Romney is a vote for Obama.
Neil is getting old, which is why I hardly listen to him any more.
just steps away from the famed Mayo clinic
do they sell potato salad @ the mayo clinic?
yes but you better like dill cause they dill it up
link
Interesting to see how Obama plays this. Heard a caller on the radio today suggest this was a ploy to firm up the Catholic vote, that Obama is fixing to throw Sebelius under the bus and call off the mandate. That could hurt him with the rabid anti-Christian left, but how many of them really wouldn’t vote for him?
Christ what a cynical time we live in.
As an aside, Mark Levin has been saying all along that he will rally around Romney, if Romney is the nominee.
However, while listening to Levin today, it sounds like Levin is really souring on Romney.
Perhaps a bit of rethink is in the works?
For what it’s worth.
b.moe sanfrannan is all in. interesting walk back progg/catholics feeling the tires
A rethink of the sort you seem to suggest possible Blake, that is, a turn to urging an abstention from a vote for Romney — should he win the nomination and face Obama in the general — doesn’t sound like what I’ve been hearing from Levin today. There’s plenty of good reason to be sour on Romney, and Romney himself just keeps plugging away adding to those reasons, but that won’t change the disaster the nation will face if Obama wins reelection. Santorum, in the meantime, is by far the better choice over-against Romney, and that’s all Levin seems to me to be aiming at.
This is why I am an agnostic, I really hope there is a hell for that bitch to burn in.
She is too fucking stupid to even hide what an amoral whore she is.
Neil Boortz was angry today on the radio at people who say they won’t vote for Romney. Mr. Libertarian third party rebel dude is all not voting for Romney is a vote for Obama.
Neil is getting old, which is why I hardly listen to him any more.
That’s funny. Because Boortz is one of the guys who put us where we are when he was promoting the “lose in ’06 to win in ’08” strategy. (i.e. punish the GOP for Big Gov’t conservatism now so that we can back to being the party of reducing the scope of gov’t).
I remember him repenting of that —hard after Nancy and Harry started goin’ to town.
losing is never good if Obama wins a second term he’ll rape us all with his fiery cock of socialist trauma
mark my words
well if baracky seasons it with dill it won’t be so bad
I disagree with Levin, sdferr, and I’ve said so. Levin was quite critical of Boehner for saying, in the run-up to the debt ceiling “crisis,” that he wouldn’t allow the government to shut down. That is, he gave up all his leverage and then naturally had to buckle in the “negotiations.”
And that’s because it wasn’t a negotiation any longer: Obama knew Boehner wouldn’t shut down the government — he’d promised as much — so all he had to do was wait it out and let the GOP sweat. Hell, Obama was probably playing golf until Boehner caved.
Here, it’s the same thing: Levin is very keen on making sure everyone knows that, if it comes down to it, he’ll vote for Romney over Obama. And that’s just what the GOP establishment is counting on. They don’t care if you’re pissed (you have 4 years to get over that); they just care that they can count on your vote. And so they have no real motivation to give you anything other than what they want to give you. Because really, you’ve already committed. So they just have to wait you out and outspend you / out organize you / out media you during the primaries.
It’s not a negotiation at that point. You’ve said you’ll cave. How hard you fight in the meantime is just a Pyrrhic victory if you can’t defeat Romney, and you won’t defeat Romney without the leverage to convince the GOP it had better allow other candidates a fair shake in the process.
I can see no reason to state upfront that you’ll give your vote to Romney in the end. None. It’s bad strategy, and it weakens your negotiating stance. Simple as that.
will a highlighter do?
Good thing no one here is voting for Obama, I don’t think. That way if he wins, we can blame the people who DID vote for him.
stupid obama voters I hate them
but strategy-wise there’s also the consideration of which potential nominee will do more to excite the rapist’s base
Romney doesn’t excite anybody
i could vote for the mittens in nov. only so the the replacement of “ruth ‘i’m a progg’ ginsberg and who will tell the egyptians this cuntry suxs” is almost souter like. heavy on the dill or pickle.
ms. coulter has a mittens vibrator
Good thing no one here is voting for Obama
I might.
Depends on if I think saving the GOP from Romney is more important than saving the country from four more years of Obama.
Of course, if how I was going to vote was actually going to have an effect on my State’s electoral votes, I might not be so cavalier.
Lucky me.
I’ve understood your reasoning on that score since you laid it out Jeff, and think it’s well worth the effort to repeat, in part because the reasoning is sound with regard to the message the Republicans may take away (I only say “may” on account of the remaining question whether the Republicans in any sense mull such matters at all, given the evident lack of thought we see manifest in their general reactions to the Tea Party movement, if not manifest as a simple outright hostility thereto). In any case, for my part, in the main I attempt to keep my own counsel with regard to such questions (to vote for Romney or abstain, I mean), in particular with the events relatively far into the future, but choose instead to urge what I think I can urge in good conscience, namely, a vote for Santorum for everyone having that opportunity, between now and the Republican convention.
As regards the Republicans: after the election has either doomed the country (Obama), muddled the country (Romney or Gingrich) or granted the country one more slim chance at salvation (Santorum), I’m committed to be done with them, and to seek to organize with others a new party representing my considered political views.
Yes, happyfeet. We can’t nominate a conservative because that would excite the left’s base. And we don’t want that. Best to go with the “stealth conservative.” So skilled you’ll never even know he’s actually conservative, and nothing in the way he governs will give it away, either.
Sneaky. Staunch.
Why are you here on this site? Honestly, I’m curious. Because from where I sit it’s like you get some perverse thrill trying to cagily beat back everything I’ve written about for years here concerning the importance of fighting for your ideals and not allowing the left to set the rules, pick your candidates, frame the debates, etc. And you do it just to get a rise out of people.
It’s strange and sad I think.
Romney doesn’t excite anybody
By the time he’s through, Obama’s base will loathe him. Romney’s base?
What Romney base?
we’d be on the same page but that Santorum is an odious religious nutcase I think
it’s too bad there’s not a consensus candidate, cause Romney sucks ass
I don’t know, I think Romney has excited me into loathing him already, but then I don’t think of myself as someone’s “base”, so much as just another commoner amongst the riff-raff.
Just for everyone’s info, self-identified Conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by 2-1. I think we can afford to rile ’em up a bit.
the only thing what excites me is the prospect of blissful obamalessness
that Santorum is an odious religious nutcase
I keep hearing that. Haven’t seen any evidence of it myself, but I guess it must be true. Otherwise
people woudn’t be saying itI wouldn’t keep hearing it.You and I are never on the same page. You’re a griefer.
I’m not gonna jump up and down and wave pom poms for a social con it’s just not in my nature Mr. Ernst
But he’ll tell you how swell and misunderstood are nishi and thor.
Because he’s a griefer, and nobody here other than leigh really takes anything he says seriously. And she’ll learn.
bye
James Madison on Property. (h/t Scott Johnson, at Powerline)
Perhaps not.
But what’s clearly in your nature is to ignore questions or comments you can’t answer and pretend they don’t exist; as you just did when Jeff pinned you down like a bug under a microscope. Don’t think it’s not noticed.
Our ‘Newspaper of Record’ floats the idea that the U.S. Constitution is needing changed. Like a diaper or something; it’s old, dated and doesn’t reflect democracy anymore.
If you really want to get sick, read down a ways in the comments. Seems LeftLibProggs have found something they’ll cheer for.
“bye”
run run ‘feets’ save the little debbies
she’ll learn
maybe
Seeing as how the term democracy doesn’t appear within an infinite distance of the Constitution, they’d probably be right about that.
yes the “newspaper” of record financed by a slimy guy from fast and furious way. populated with economically, psychologically, scientifically retarded “thinkers”.
I don’t know the circles you guys run in, but I can definitely see happyfeets angle. There are a lot of folks out there than lean classic liberal but get put off when a conservative can’t open his mouth without something about abortion or birth control or somesuch coming out first thing. Every. Fucking. Time.
Some of it is media spin, I realize, but it is frankly hard to understand why we can’t come up with a decent candidate fiscally who doesn’t feel the need to evangelize too. I know a lot of good, decent people who don’t like Obama at all but are scared shitless of Santorum. If you aren’t willing to acknowledge its a problem we are never going to accomplish anything.
It’s one thing to acknowledge the existence of a false opinion, it’s quite another to dismantle it piece by piece.
What the fuck is a false opinion? Its how people feel, there is nothing false about it.
Click on the last video link on this site, what is the first thing they start in on?
“I know a lot of good, decent people who don’t like Obama at all but are scared shitless of Santorum.”
really. for what?
I have to agree with B. Moe. If Santorum or his handlers are letting him be defined as an Inquisitor, whose fault is that?
The boy is a great debator. Surely he knows how to pivot and turn the questioning to how he is going to save our Republic. And stop talking about handing out money to people who have babies. That caused a problem right here in PW City with the DINKs, and I don’t blame them.
“a decent candidate fiscally who doesn’t feel the need to evangelize too”
i laugh in your general direction because the first thing proggtards care about is the “sacrament” of abortion. if they could kill babies with their bare hands these a##holes would do it.
“If Santorum or his handlers are letting him be defined as an Inquisitor, whose fault is that? ”
yea repeat sh(t and rinse. go clown.
Those are issues that are rooted deep in the bedrock of conservatism. Bitterly clinging to those, and to other values that are moral and that matter provides strong anchor points on which to base the rest of our principles. I mean, if we can’t seem to save a few innocent lives, what good is a strong, smoothly-running economy, really?
Without ties to bedrock, one starts to drift. You can see how far adrift are the majority of people who comprise our sickening society today? We’ve moved so far Left of ‘Center’ that we’ll likely never make it back to where we were, when ‘Center’ meant ‘centered’. ‘Conservative’ means sticking to your principles no matter who or what shows up for to do battle.
We are losing because we can’t stay anchored to principles that really matter.
so after you destroy newt and rickys, what’s your “classical liberal” view of the remaining dick heads?
Why, it’s his, certainly. After all, how others define you defines you.
And the left is more than happy to define us to ourselves. And that’s our fault. Doesn’t matter if we actually are like they say: what matters is our inability to prove a negative.
Born to lose.
So you really believe over a million babies a year are being murdered, and the best you can come up with is hoping Rick Santorum might get a chance to appoint a couple of Justices who one of these years might someday get a chance to overturn Roe v Wade and then somebody maybe will pass a law or something.
And you are going to lecture somebody else on morality?
Really?
“if they could kill babies with their bare hands these a##holes would do it.”
oh the sanger brigade left that to the black doc in philly. maggy sang says hooray “kil dem darkies”
it’s either that or set loose the clinic bombers, B. Moe. But that’s frowned upon.
“and the best you can come up with is hoping Rick Santorum might get a chance to appoint a couple of Justices who one of these years might someday get a chance to overturn Roe v Wade ”
i find your penumbras interfering with your emanations. use dill in your potato salad.
Santorum is who he is. He is the best we got, and that is fucking pathetic.
#occupy planned abortion
I used to feel that way, BMoe, until it dawned on me that most of the time it is the religious person who is a victim of the state trying to subvert his religion and replace it with its own. If you know people who are more scared of what Santorum might do than what Obama has already done, than they’ve allowed the cartoons created by the left — and then beaten into them through years of pop-cultural portrayals — to control them.
The reason I’m sanguine about Santorum is that he is willing to stand and answer questions and explain his positions to the point that the caricature loses power and people come to realize that he is not an alien creature — and that his religious convictions work within the confines of the Constitution.
Once people see that, they realize that many of thowe who want you to distrust people for their faith do so to keep your concentration off of their secular religious takeovers of your freedoms.
“He is the best we got, and that is fucking pathetic.”
coming off of obama-bush that’s the best we got. this stupid idea of gov’t is tough to do a 180
So you aren’t willing to blow up a clinic, but you are perfectly willing to blow up the country.
Just put on the backburner for a couple of cycles and maybe we can still save this shit. Probably not, but what the hell.
Let’s see B. Moe: “Its how people feel, there is nothing false about it.”
So, by this line of reasoning, “Kill the Jews!: they are an inferior race, a blight and a destruction to the Aryan people!” Oh, hey, it’s just how people feel, nothing false about it! Very well, then I must say there are no false opinions.
I predicted this re: the Constitution back when the trial balloons first came out — around the time Ezra Klein was musing over the age of the document, etc.
Here’s the answer: if the left doesn’t want the Constitution, we don’t have a rule of law that is dependent on anything other than force. We live perforce in a police state. And the only response is anarchy.
Jeff, we are talking past each other. If the common perception of you is that you are going to string Patterico up from a tree and all his readers run with it, don’t you fight back like you did when he was lying about you? Or do you just roll with “Oh, that’s just your perception” and carry on?
Depends. Am I busy running for President? And if so, do I worry that people are scared I might take away their condoms, or do I worry that the guy with the millions is sending out oppo research that says I’m a big spending earmark whore?
Santorum is a man of faith. If you ask him questions about his faith he answers. The trick of the left is to focus on his faith, then scare people with how odiously religious is Santorum based on how much he talks about religious issues.
Not wanting to be preached to by the President and not wanting to have policy influenced by what you view as extreme religion is not a “false” opinion. It is how people feel, and what they want.
You don’t have to dismantle it, you have to assuage it. Santorum has done a rather shitty job of that.
Obviously the latter.
Is it working? I guess we’ll find out. What does local news say in CO today?
“And the only response is anarchy.”
i would say that the response is “fall back to your states”. they made the fed. gov’t.
I’m not willing to literallly blow up a clinic. The country will or will not figuratively blow itself up with or without my lone curmudgeonly non-vote for Utahbama if he indeed become the R nominee.
@112 decentralize
It’s next to impossible — or no, it is impossible — to assuage a fiction, B. Moe, so to that extent, I’m inclined to cut Santorum a bit of slack.
Policy, on the other hand, is influenced by many things, and not solely the Catholic faith, be it labeled “extreme” or no (which, by the way, for my part, I think modern Catholicism rather one of the least extremes where it comes to religious business, but that’s only my own view).
There’s a million abortions a year in this country?
Man, what a sick society.
We’re preached to all the time. But it’s mostly about the importance of injecting government into our lives, not about the importance of removing it and allowing people to practice their faith freely (which is part and parcel of the identity of social contracts on this continent since the Puritans arrived).
Frankly, I’m far less worried about Santorum’s using government to set up religious orders than I am of the leftists setting up religious orders that they disguise as government.
“Not wanting to be preached to by the President ”
are you killing a baby by abortion: yes or no?
you do know baracky likes to kill them outside of the womb.
Colorado is a caucus state, and I’m hearing that there’s pressure being applied based on the “electability” and “looks Presidential” tropes. The people are backing Santorum’s message, but they fear that only Mitt can win against Obama.
Because this has been drilled into them. On purpose.
We’ll see. I suspect Romney wins but Santorum shows well here.
Preacher-in-Chief:
See? We can’t even talk about Santorum on PW without hauling out the knives coming out.
coming outIf somebody is telling me I should only fuck if I am married and trying to have babies, that is extreme. And it frankly makes people question your judgement, and sanity.
Sorry, but that is how it is in the world I live in.
I am mostly just really, really frustrated, to the point of actual anger, that these three fucking stooges are what we have to choose from. You guys are defending a failed Senator, whose only other job was a hack lawyer for pro wrestling for gods sake. This guy has no more experience than the idiot we have now. You really think there is a chance in hell he is actually going to accomplish anything?
The dude best known for taking a bullet for Arlen Spector?
The whole mess is fucking nuts.
Plato would pop Obama upside the haid, he would.
The Soc-cons didn’t destroy themselves. This was a conscious strategy on the left that has been implemented for many many years now. The left fears those who are actual believers in Christ. C&E Christians they are fine with as are those whose Christianity is but a mask for their true progressive religion.
The experience of the Soviets was that true Christians were impossible to control by any physical or mental means and that made them a threat that had to be destroyed. Tens of millions died under the Communists.
That so many now accept the lies that the left tells about the religious is a testament to how thoroughly and mercilessly they have work to destroy believers. This has led to there being some who want payback but they are not a majority, not even a small minority, but only a vocal few. The craziest all seem to either have some personal demon which ruins them or to be of the left but never announced as such by the media.
That isn’t about Santorum leigh, so much as it’s about us, seems to me. Santorum, after all, isn’t here, not only in the ordinary sense, but not even in the simpler sense of straight up quotation, argument and counter-argument. What we have instead are representations as to other’s (nameless others, no less) opinions regarding their beliefs of Santorum’s views, without his particular views making any appearance on the scene at all.
True enough, sdferr. It does get wearying to be called names and told to fuck off for asking questions in good faith. And I do ask in good faith.
None of these clowns has a chance in hell of beating Obama, he can only beat himself at this point. Somebody else might make a late move on him, which given the insanity of the current process and the problem of the press is probably the smart play.
I just don’t see smart around that much any more.
I don’t feel like looking again, sdferr, but I have linked before to Santorum saying he wanted to use the White House as a platform to lecture about the evils of birth control. He said it repeatedly and he won’t walk it back to my knowledge.
That is just fucking stupid if you want to be taken seriously.
What’s worse? Someone telling you that they don’t like or agree with something you do or someone using the force of the government to make everyone do exactly what they want them to do.
Christianity is not about conversion by the sword. It has in a few instances been twisted to that effect but except for some few cults not in recent centuries. The same cannot be said for either the religion of the progressive left or of Islam. In those two it can be said, “There’s your problem.”
Why do you care? Nobody’s mandating that you can only fuck to procreate. It simply doesn’t affect me — and I have no fear that Santorum would ever try to institutionalize the idea. It’s a complete non-issue. Unless you’re dealing with it from the perspective of federalism, in which case the question is largely academic.
Abortion, on the other hand, has, for reasons we’ve discussed here, a different social contour, because it comes down to very fundamental questions of both science and religion, namely, what is life, when does it begin, who is protected by the Constitution, and how do we negotiate a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body with the rights of an unborn child, if indeed that’s what we believe is being carried in the womb.
Similar concerns arise, for me at least, over the idea of expanding the definition of marriage when other options are available — and that’s because the left is always looking to pressure decisions made by courts to break down constitutional protections in order to undermine a society built on natural rights and limited governmental powers.
B Moe, you really need to read Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings. “Social” and “Fiscal” are two sides of the same coin: People who are willing to put off gratification and instant rewards in one sphere are more likely to put them off in others, because they have been taught that it isn’t all about them; it’s about them not buying the big screen this month because the family needs essentials first.
B. Moe, did you see Marco Rubio’s address about abortion the other day? It’s worth a look, I think, even if — or maybe especially if — you disagree with his position on the subject.
I personally don’t know anyone willing to blow up a clinic. Stay away from me if you do. But I do ‘know’ plenty of people who are willing to destroy this country (see comments to that NYT link above); they, for the most part, embrace abortion as a sacrament. Why give ’em any succor, by agreeing with them that the entire topic is bad, bad bad for America? If you agree with them, fine; but what that means is you’re adrifting Left AFAIC.
Failure to anchor. It’s what’s cool in ‘Centered’ American politics. Enjoy the ride!
“None of these clowns has a chance in hell of beating Obama”
no sir. only mittens can’t beat baracky. see romney/obamacare
Goes to.
Plato’s Republics were all failures. They were Utopian dreams.
This megalomaniac isn’t even hiding it any more. They are all in: they think they can convince the dumbed down citizenry to vote for an overthrow of the Constitution in exchange for the promises of a Utopia. Or more likely, they think they can gull enough people into buying into more forward-looking fantasies.
I quit running in circles. Too much with the falling over afterwards.
70 million Catholics to ‘battle Obama‘. Now that’s a real chunk of electoral CHANGE, if it can translate to votes.
how’s come we ain’t discussing baracky’s abortion record or his punishing with a baby statement?
http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/33663535
Here’s the kind of stuff that becomes the oft-repeated truth. And this, too.
We ran into this very issue when John Roberts was being attacked by the left for a french fry ruling. He said it wasn’t the job of the courts to overturn laws made by the states that adhere to the Constitution and precedent simply because they were dumb. Similarly, Thomas took that same tack in his dissent on Lawrence (and I agreed with him).
Santorum is making that same argument here. That’s it. A state has a right to pass dumb statutes that pass Constitutional muster. And given that Griswald was planned as the stepping stone to Roe, you can see why Santorum is wary of courts overstepping, even if they believe the (local) ruling is largely innocuous.
But it’s an academic question.
The point being, that Santorum’s actual views and reasoning are not properly characterized, because the goal is to tether to him teh crazy and teh extreme — when really, his opinion would be right at home in the Federalist Society.
mr mittens would be “credible” as a front runner if he said sumthing like this:
“The President promised that he would not increase taxes for the low and middle-income people, the workers of America. Then he imposed on American families the largest single tax increase in our nation’s history. His answer to all this misery? He tries to tell us that we’re “only” in a recession, not a depression, as if definitions, words, relieve our suffering.
Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well if it’s a definition — if it’s a definition he wants, I’ll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganlibertypark.htm
If he said something like it now, who would believe him?
Today is Ronald Reagan’s 101 birthday.
“If somebody is telling me I should only fuck if I am married and trying to have babies, that is extreme.”
I would respond with:
If somebody is telling me I should only fuck[their daughter] if I am married [to her]and
trying to have[making actual decisions] about babies, that isextreme[just good sense].That’s how I’d expect most fathers to think anyway…
@144 dude rhetorical
If somebody is telling me I should only fuck if I am married and trying to have babies,
Nobody’s telling you that. Not the latter part. And certainly not Santorum.
dead baby jokes are more fun with dill!
Perhaps we can all agree that in this instance what we want is for the Left (Statists, Utopians, Anointed, meddling busy-body sonsofbitches) to not get any of their State on our (ir)religion?
But those bitter clingers who want to have a more direct and personal relationship with their god — why, they’re just too extreme to tolerate.
the man santorum defeated
link
Don’t know if sdferr was channeling Jeff or if Jeff anticipated sdferr:
Couldn’t resist:
So, Ryan was “bloodied” by opposition attack advertizing, but Obama? Hmmm, doesn’t seem to say there in the lede, but, let’s see?
Obama’s Budget in 2011 was defeated in the Democrat controlled Senate by a vote of 97 against, 0 for.
So, what should we call that little set back? Annihilation, maybe?
This year, Obama won’t even bother to submit a Budget on time. Reckon he knows what’s coming?
Yuval Levin and I agree last week.
Obama and company should be renamed Engulf & Devour Inc.
He is exactly who we thought he was. Finally, it’s starting to show; the glossy veneer is thinning.
But, given the decrepit state of the morals and values of average, ‘centered’ American citizenry, it likely won’t matter much. Obama will likely enjoy continued political success and be rewarded with re-election; the Executive in Chief of this ‘failshit’ (thanks for that, ‘feets!) State.
Why should he bother when Harry Reid’s already said he has no intention of or interest in trying to pass one.
Damn obstructionsist teabaggers! Why do they hate fiduciary responsibility?!?
Obama will likely enjoy continued political success and be rewarded with re-election; the Executive in Chief of this ‘failshit’ (thanks for that, ‘feets!) State.
If he is, then we deserve to fail —and we probably will, what with this being a democracy instead of a republic.
And if you think the state as State is failing, you’re using the wrong metric.
That depends. Just consider how much the current idiot accomplished in only two years with a willing Congress. He isn’t lying when he says he’ll put his record in his first two years up against that of any other President save Johnson, FDR and Lincoln.
The lesson of that little episode is that you can’t rely on establishment types, so don’t make deals with them.
link
“So you really believe over a million babies a year are being murdered, and the best you can come up with is hoping Rick Santorum might get a chance to appoint a couple of Justices…
BMoe,
I’d be much happier if someone could convince people that abortions should be undesirable and un(tax payer)funded rather than unlawful. Running for National office and having a special needs child tends to support that goal.
I think you may have you views on SOCONS (Santorum in particular) clouded by the prism of media reporting. I’d encourage you to find the article you refered to and look into the possibility that the statement regarding birh control was taken out of context or just made up by someone with an agenda to promote.
VDH pretty much lays out why I think anyone scared of Santorum’s Christian beliefs and any lectures he might deliver about abortion need to wake up and see what’s happening to our country.
The Dohrn-Ayers Dinner Project.
Horseshit, start to finish.
Then George Washington would be unelectable.
Those DC_Crawler guys were batted about like children’s playthings.
Maybe they should’ve invited Mike Tyson to come along too. You know, for the ‘Wombshifter’ POV.
Oh, OT. Jeff, Stanley Fish is talking textualism…
The guy then promotes academic jackoffery rather than apply real linguistic skills to political ends. Seriously, with that sort of ‘keep it in the realm of academe’, if he’d been a researcher who’d come across the cure for cancer, he’d never have brought it out of the lab. He’s completely useless to anyone.
From a commenter at the sdferr’s link:
Obama is my shepherd; I shall not work.
He keepth jobs out of the hands of the people,
Which leadeth the country to class warfare and polarization.
He encourageth sloth; he leadeth the government to new heights in deficit spending.
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of Economic collapse,
I shall fear no depression: for Obama is with me.
His handouts and monetary indiscretion supplement my income.
He maintainest spending increases in the presence of insurmountable debt;
He punisheth businesses with excessive regulations;
And giveth the hard-earned fruits of labor to the unproductive.
Surely, handouts and stimulus payments shall follow all the days of his administration;
And I will stay unemployed forever.
Can I get a Darn Skippy! from the Brigade?
He rubber stamped what Congress shoved through with the media running interference. Our guy isn’t going to have it that easy. We need someone who can overcome long odds, who knows how the game works.
Someone who when the media starts with the set up questions is smart enough to not play, someone who redirects to the important issues and doesn’t eagerly start giving them soundbites they can use to destroy him.
Right now, the most important thing for the Republicans is to take control of their own selection process and stop letting the Democrats pick who they want to run against.
I pretty much more or less agree with that B. Moe, particularly the take control of the nomination process part.
My quibble is that if a candidate spends all of his time worrying about how not to have what he says misconstrued or distorted, he’s never going to say anything meaningful.
[…] than that, along with, as Jeff notes, his support for “Obama’s stimulus, TARP, federal minimum wage increases, cap and trade, […]